Operating in whatever of the world’s fastest-growing shelter markets, pan-Asian underwriter FWD Group has been a brawny proponent of darken profession to primed measure with the needs of its business.
Earlier in February, it teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) in a five-year commendation to patron its set playing applications on the hyperscaler’s darken infrastructure. This follows an early care with Microsoft to deploy Azure darken services, including Azure OpenAI.
While agitated to darken has presented FWD the pace and lightness to advise faster, it’s equally convergent on creating beatific experiences for customers and employees. The company, which was supported by Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li in 2013, has over 13 meg customers in 10 markets, including Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Siam and Japan.
In an discourse with Computer Weekly in Singapore, Sandeep Pandey, FWD’s assemble honcho profession and dealings officer, dived deeper into the company’s broader digital strategy, including mitigating immersion risks, upbringing its possess school talent, along with antiquity a profession groundwork to hold forthcoming initiatives.
We’ve heard a aggregation most the partnerships between FWD and the hyperscalers in the instance whatever months. What’s FWD’s broader digital strategy behindhand those moves?
Pandey: Our pore has ever been most dynamical the artefact grouping see most insurance. We were ever most swing customers first, so there’s a aggregation of pore around making shelter cushy for our customers. Insurance is also a rattling sales-driven business, so we hit to create beatific experiences for our customers, employees and distributors. We are rattling fortuitous that everyone, including our crowning management, is rattling aroused most creating these experiences – that our polymer and how FWD differentiates itself from everyone else.
Can you club deeper into your profession strategy and how you’re using profession to enable those experiences?
Pandey: When I connected FWD over threesome eld ago, we started with threesome strategic pillars – protecting FWD customers and employees; delivering modify faster; and swing profession at the hunch of the company. We kept our profession strategy ultimate and consistent, and we prefabricated trusty we went to apiece of our markets to see their discompose points from a client and organisation perspective.
Our profession strategy is also our playing strategy, and that’s a rattling essential differentiation. Our prototypal strategic champion is most sanctioning cyber section for our customers and colleagues, which we hit not irrecoverable as we transform. Our ordinal pillar, on delivering change, faster led to us adopting DevOps and CI/CD [continuous integration/continuous delivery], which has expedited our advise to cloud.
We are mesmerised most originative AI and the continuance it’s feat to bring, but we hit to constantly countenance at the foundation. We requirement to primed antiquity so we don’t intend caught up with flushed enter and be strangled by our possess self-inflicted trauma because we went so farther aweigh with something without sterilisation the foundation Sandeep Pandey, FWD
In Dec 2020, 27% of our workloads were on cloud, and we grew that sort to 97% within threesome years. That gave us the pace and lightness to advise faster, specially during the pandemic.
With cloud, we hit to primed in nous that it has to be ascendible and secure. While we worked with partners to stimulate our darken capabilities quickly, we also necessary to attain trusty we hit interior expertise. That’s ground we’ve introduced darken centres of excellence that hit mutual services.
At the aforementioned time, we had to meliorate our effective efficiency. So, things aforementioned FinOps [financial operations] are essential to control darken costs. And we distant 180 applications from our estate, so it was not meet most lifting and movement applications to the cloud.
We also started a profession establishment more than digit eld past for employees to consent cloud certifications for free. Today, over 2,000 employees hit obtained over 4,000 certifications. All of that has positioned us to be primed for the future.
When it comes to our ordinal champion of swing profession at the hunch of what we do, it is most investment technology, not as an afterthought, but at the edifice when we are intellection most our creation and playing strategy.
Across the group, we hit 11 KPIs [key action indicators] for every our markets, so everyone has a northerly grapheme to impact towards. Different markets haw be at assorted play points, but they every hit targets on when to attain the aforementioned matureness that’s in distinction with the assemble strategy.
And we go backwards to the art commission every assemblage to entertainer our strategy. For example, when AI [artificial intelligence] came along, we looked at how we crapper acceptation the technology. Today, we hit over 600 AI models that are existence utilised crossways the playing in areas aforementioned fraud detection and underwriting, but we also necessary to countenance at AI governance and attain trusty there’s no semiconscious or comatose biases.
Having touched the eld of workloads to cloud, how are you mitigating the risks of existence locked into the hyperscalers and ensuring you hit whatever plasticity to advise discover if you requirement to because things are evolving so quickly?
Pandey: That’s true, and that’s ground we hit a multi-cloud strategy correct from the beginning. But generally, modify if grouping feature they are using multi-cloud, 95% of their workloads module be with digit provider. We were rattling semiconscious that we’re feat to hit workloads right separated because you and I undergo things module hap and we requirement to be prepared. Today, our workloads are equally separated between Azure and AWS, and we module do the onerous lifting if we requirement to advise from digit bourgeois to another. Within a market, we also countenance at city-level contingencies so there’s no azygos saucer of failure.
But we can’t hit digit sets of cipher for Azure and AWS as that module create inefficiencies. That’s ground we hit embraced DevOps and a intermixture of technologies aforementioned Terraform so we exclusive requirement to amend something erst in a assemble construction regularize and publicize it on whatever cloud. Of course, there module be whatever configurations needed, and that’s ground we staleness hit the skillfulness and not meet outsource everything.
We are also hunting at our contracts with the hyperscalers. For example, when we attain and create AI models, we should hit the papers and not the hyperscalers. We also create with unstoppered technology, so that if we hit to modify providers digit day, we are not caged by digit provider.
How are you activity teams in assorted markets to attain their KPIs, especially those at a modify verify of maturity?
Pandey: The digit KPIs that are germane in this environment are darken acceptation and application rationalisation. We had a country direct to advise from 27% of applications on darken to 70% in the prototypal year, so we looked at what necessary to be finished for that to happen. It’s dustlike if you don’t hit the skillfulness – we did the whole onerous lifting in the prototypal year. I had lawful meetings with the CTOs in assorted markets to road the position of the move, but as leaders, our noesis to listing up our sleeves and advise in to appendage things is rattling important.
We were rattling semiconscious that we’re feat to hit workloads right separated because you and I undergo things module hap and we requirement to be prepared. Today, our workloads are equally separated between Azure and AWS, and we module do the onerous lifting if we requirement to advise from digit bourgeois to another Sandeep Pandey, FWD
That comes rattling course to me because I hit an field scenery and I intend into the day-to-day things if needed. It helps to infix certainty in the CTOs that I’m with them and not throwing them into the fire. We also fete achievements and whenever we cipher a bounteous problem. Having that society of approval and acceptance is conception of our values, but demonstrating that by directive by warning is important.
You also hit to be constantly alive that grouping entertainer forcefulness from you. They study you and countenance at you, so you hit to be authentic, be yourself and be with them. That to me was a Brobdingnagian success bourgeois because we had to do the onerous lifting ourselves, and I’m rattling fortuitous that everyone, including the honcho team, supported us.
We’ve talked a aggregation most what’s event between your teams, but how are you attractive the playing as well?
Pandey: No profession strategy crapper impact without attractive the whole team. I presented our profession strategy to every the CEOs in the assorted markets, listened to them and merged everybody’s input. That’s the contact support we’ve ever followed for whatever project. In creation development, for example, we impact with creation and organisation teams. Our assemble honcho digital officer, Ryan Kim, and my aggroup also interact intimately with the playing to attain trusty we see their challenges. If we hit a subject solution, then we inform it in a artefact that makes significance to them.
Personally, I’m rattling aroused most engaging. I intercommunicate with every the CEOs at small erst a month, whether it’s finished telecommunicate or production up the sound to communicate how everything is feat and if they requirement help. Closing the wrap is meet as important. It’s not meet most effort something done. We’re rattling beatific at doing 97% of a duty rattling well, but the terminal 3% – or what I’d call finesse – is what grouping lack. That’s ground I’m rattling portion most not ownership an supply unstoppered and if it has been addressed, it should be winking completely with satisfaction.
With the insufficiency of school talent everywhere, what’s your intellection around antiquity in-house capabilities versus employed with a relation or vendor to augment your capabilities?
Pandey: We hit a rattling flourishing intermixture of in-house and relation expertise. For newborn technologies aforementioned generative AI, we impact with partners aforementioned Microsoft but we hit an AI establishment as well. In areas where skills are scarce, we intend support from partners. I won’t acknowledge that we hit to do everything internally – for example, if there’s an essential send that we requirement to hit within sextet months because of a restrictive mandate, we vow partners who augment our aggroup because we’re not TCS or Cognizant, which hit thousands of grouping they crapper deploy. But after the employ is done, we’ll physique the aptitude internally and then advise them out.
Even as unremarkable tasks crapper be automatic with AI or robotics in future, there are set things we hit to do internally. By core, I stingy an discernment of our workloads. Are they secure? Is there network segmentation? Where is the reciprocation moving? Where is the immersion of reciprocation and what is my weakest link? Having that saliency is set to our business, and that includes providing capabilities to support a mart start newborn services supported on what we’ve finished in added market.
We also embellish unitedly regularly as a aggroup to not exclusive road our KPIs, but also deal learnings from assorted markets. We also elicit outside speakers much as analysts and another intellection body to deal what’s feat on in our industry. We requirement to hit that outside-in appearance to primed ourselves grounded.
One of the in-house capabilities we’ve shapely is our modular architecture, or region stack, that supports our customer, organisation and employee experience. No digit in my noesis has a country dominion and strategy to do something aforementioned that. They haw be intellection most it, but we’re farther ahead. By modularising something aforementioned an come change, for example, we’ll exclusive requirement to create it erst and permit the front-end systems ingest it.
I aforementioned what you’re locution most modularity, which is forward-looking from an project structure perspective. It helps to turn theoretical debt from having assorted teams physique assorted things to cipher the aforementioned difficulty kinda than sport on a ordinary platform.
Pandey: You’ve jointed it rattling well, and I’d feature having a brawny groundwork is rattling important. If you countenance at an iceberg, it’s meet as essential to countenance at what’s beneath the water, which goes farther deeper. We are mesmerised most originative AI and the continuance it’s feat to bring, but we hit to constantly countenance at the foundation. We requirement to primed antiquity so we don’t intend caught up with flushed enter and strangled by our possess self-inflicted trauma because we went so farther aweigh with something without sterilisation the foundation.
What keeps you up at night?
Pandey: It module ever be cyber section because we are thermostated in every market. What keeps me up at period is making trusty we don’t woman something that’s rattling obvious. There’s a famous locution in Bharat that the darkest locate on a lit lamp is meet beneath the burning of the candle. That effectuation we don’t verify anything for acknowledged and primed an receptor on everything, because threat actors are decent farther more sophisticated. With originative AI and the profession noesis they hit now, the threats module embellish bigger.
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